‘If trust breaks, everything ends’: stigma, risk and the cultural production of care in an Indonesian partner-swapping community

Consensually non-monogamous people and communities are heavily stigmatised and in much of the world remain hidden from public life and from the health systems meant to serve them. Swingers, in particular, are an under-recognised sexual-health risk group that services struggle to reach. Drawing on twelve months ethnographic fieldwork in a closed partner-swapping community in Indonesia, this article examines how a stigmatised sexual community organises itself to protect its members and to manage risk. Risk as members articulated it was overwhelmingly relational, familial and reputational. Infection risk was not disregarded but was managed by social means documentation at the threshold and an informal network through which news of illness travelled rather than through contact with sexual-health services. Members sustained their sexual and emotional wellbeing through three practices: trust-building that regulated access, consent and accountability; boundary-making through coded language; and decentralised governance enacted through mediation and graduated response. Gender shaped how self-regulation was judged within the community. The capacity for sexual self-governance was central to membership, trust and informal authority, but women faced greater scrutiny over their sexual conduct than men. At the same time, practices that protected members from social exposure also kept the community largely separate from formal sexual-health services.